Friday, 8 August 2008

Psychologists at New York University say they've found the answer to why people with right wing political views are happier than left-leaning liberals (as previously indicated by survey research). In short, conservatives are less upset by inequality because they believe people generally get what they deserve in life.

Jaime Napier and John Jost gave questionnaires to over a thousand Americans and found that conservatives were happier than liberals even after controlling for the possible influence of demographic differences, such as in wealth and religiosity. Crucially, they found that at least some of the difference in happiness was explained by the conservatives being less bothered by inequality.

A second study found a similar pattern in nine other countries, including New Zealand, Norway and Spain. This time the greater happiness of conservatives was associated with their meritocratic beliefs - for example, their belief that, in the long run, hard work usually brings a better life.

A final study showed that liberals in America have grown less happy as inequality has risen, whereas the happiness of conservatives has remained unaffected. This appears to confirm Napier and Jost's contention that right wing political beliefs can guard against the potentially upsetting effects of inequality.

The pair concluded that beliefs can have a protective effect on happiness in other walks of life too. "Research suggests that highly egalitarian women are less happy in their marriages compared with their more traditional counterparts apparently because they are more troubled by disparities in domestic labour" they said.
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4 comments:

In Study 1, they mentioned using US political party allegiance to measure 'liberalness' or 'conservatism', and groups participants as 'left-wingers' or 'right-wingers'.

I really doubt this is valid.

My first point is that politics is much more complicatd than a simple "Left/Right" dichotomy. Let's take, for example, Robert Mugabe and the Dalai Lama.

On the axis of "economy", they are in a similar position. (i.e. leaning towards communism). However, on the authoritarianism axis, they are almost polar opposites, with the Dalai Lama near the "libertarian" end of the scale, and Mugabe towards the "Fascist" end of the scale.

For more information on why the left/right system is inadequate, see http://www.politicalcompass.org.

My second point is that using the Republican/Democrat scale to diffrentiate between liberals and conservatives is flawed because they are both "right wing" parties.

Again, taking information from politicalcompass.org, you can see the relative scores of John McCain and Barack Obama. The differences are minute, and mostly economic, boiling down into "communism vs capitalism", as opposed to "liberal vs conservative".

Conservatives see the positive value of inequality. If you want to do better in life, there has to be somewhere better to go, i.e. some inequality has to exist between your current circumstances and your dreams.

I would agree with Jonathan's comments that classifying people as conservative or liberal is a bit simplistic. For instance I would describe myself as a social conservative (pro-family, anti-abortion, pro-religion) but an economic liberal who sees hard-working people scraping by on the minimum wage while Paris Hilton cavorts around having the time of her life. It's interesting the way the Right seem to have hijacked religion in the U.S. - there must be a people who want social justice AND conservative values!